Shardae Carr and her husband, Emile, got married six weeks ago, and last Friday, five days after they first laid eyes on it, the "shiny brand new" couple at last moved into their first home together.

Their move had been delayed by some months while the flat was finished, "and we said, 'We'd better get in there and it had better be good.' But it was more than good," says Carr, gesturing at her wide balcony and expansive westward view of a newly planted green square. "It was amazing … Definitely worth the wait."

The flat also has a unique history, having been the home, for a few glorious weeks last year, of two unnamed athletes from Team USA during the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

Fifteen months after the last competitor left Stratford at the close of the Games, the first residents have this week begun to move into the former athletes' village, now renovated, replanted and rebranded as "London's newest neighbourhood", East Village.

More than 2,800 properties, from one-bed flats to 5-bedroom townhouses, have had temporary bedroom partitions removed and new kitchens fitted (the athletes all dined together in a communal canteen), ready for occupation not by sporting superstars but by ordinary Londoners. It is the first phase of a development that will eventually see 14,000 new homes built on a site the size of St James's Park. The new community comes with advantages that many London residents would covet. As a result of its Olympic investment, Stratford is one of the best-connected hubs in the city, while the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, as it is now known, will eventually reopen fully to house world-class sporting facilities on the new community's doorstep. A 2,000-place school, Chobham academy, has already partly opened, the health centre opened on Monday and a dentist, optician and other services will shortly follow.

The enormous Westfield Stratford shopping centre, meanwhile, whose infrastructure investment gave the Olympic Delivery Authority a significant boost in developing the site, will shortly be rewarded with tens of thousands of new potential customers right on its doorstep.

There was never any plan to mothball or demolish the athletes' accommodation, which was built with long-term use in mind, stresses Geoff Pearce, executive director of Triathlon, one of two property companies that will manage the homes. "Our focus has always been on the legacy use, so if you look around you'll see things like really large balconies, fantastic private spaces. none of that was needed for the Games."

All Triathlon homes will be either rented or part-owned (no one on the site will fully own their property), with half of its first wave let to tenants nominated by local authorities, at rates equivalent to council house rents. A further quarter of tenants will be able to rent, like the Carrs, at an "affordable" level set between 20% and 30% lower than market rates.

But is not only the new residents who may come to consider they have struck gold in the most visible expression of London's Olympic legacy. Get Living London, the other property company onsite, is part owned by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund Qatari Diar, and it expects the East Village model – with thousands of properties rented at full market rate – to be such a lucrative one that it is planning to replicate the scheme on a smaller scale elsewhere in the capital.

Soaring house prices mean people are renting for longer, in what chief executive Derek Gorman describes as a "paradigm change". "We're seeing this as a clear marker of where London is going to go in future, and therefore we want to be part of it."

With his knowledge of London boroughs not extending much beyond EastEnders, Martin Tovee, who is moving to the capital from Macclesfield next week to take up a new job, admits he is most excited about the transport and retail links his new home will offer.

"But I just like the fact that I'm living where the Olympics was, it's something that I find quite exciting. Not so much that Mo Farah might have been sleeping in this apartment, but more that the legacy of the Olympics won't be forgotten and this will carry on as an Olympic venue, rather than be flattened by a bulldozer."